


Ghost

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Because Cylons, F/M, thinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 06:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3318221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Caprica, Sharon reflects on Boomer's relationship with Tyrol and how Helo factors in, maybe more now than ever, somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal many moons ago. I'm simply archiving it here.
> 
> At this point in the narrative, Helo doesn't know who or what Sharon is. He thinks he's with Boomer.

Ghost  
  
  
Caprica is relatively empty now, a hollowed-out shell, but somehow thinking about it that way seems absurd to Sharon. She's too full of things now. Every breath she takes reminds her of all the things she has to keep track of, the negotiations she makes every day with herself about what this is she's doing and why she'd doing it. What she feels. There's more than enough in her world. There might even be a baby.  
  
She and Helo are sleeping in a bed for the first time in days—rather, he's sleeping and she's awake. It was the only way he'd agree to it. A few days ago she might've found it ironic how she was ostensibly protecting him from herself. Now, it's not so ironic; she keenly feels how she's protecting him from them, even if they don't know it yet. She barely does, or at least she doesn't understand it.   
  
Sitting here awake, she's alone with nothing to occupy herself but her own mind, which is not all that easy or simple. Her own mind has never been just hers.  
  
 _She was too conscious of her boots in the corridor, marking the bunk room._  
  
"C'mon," Galen said, pulling her back down to his chest. She was on top of him. It made her nervous, like she was perched on some pedestal. So she closed her eyes and just listened to the steady way his heart beat. His voice rumbled in his chest, buzzed pleasantly against her ear. "Leave 'em, babe. Nobody's gonna say a godsdamned word about it. Not after everything that's happened."  
  
Everything meant the attacks. It meant falling out of the sky, back down to Caprica. She wondered if he knew how it most importantly meant leaving Helo behind, but, of course, he must have.   
  
"I know," she said with a sigh. "I just feel like a bitch for holding up the whole bunk room just to…"  
  
He squeezed his arms tighter around her. "Seriously. Frak them if they've got a problem. I missed you, Sharon."  
  
She snuggled closer. "Yeah."  
  
Sometimes the memories are comforting, and that's why Sharon can't drag herself out of them; but they make her lonely, too. She wishes she could just lie down and wrap herself around Helo, but she'd fall asleep or else he'd wake up. So she watches him sleep and she can't help but think about how she doesn't know whose eyes she looks out of when she sees him.   
  
She already knew his body long before she touched it. She knew what he was capable of without asking, how far to push to get him to act and how much he could endure. That's what makes her nervous. Touching his forearm to get his attention, kneading her hands into the flat place between his shoulder blades where he keeps all the anxiety he doesn't show, giving him a sly smile because it's the easiest way to get him to smile back, to remember to be happy: all these things she does unconsciously.   
  
She shifts closer and presses her hip up against his back and thinks about the way his body moves, the tone of his skin, the way he smells, the strength in his hands. These are things she felt and knew without learning them. The cool green of his eyes and the subtle curve of his backside and the clench of his jaw. Not Agathon, as the Cylons call him when they gauge her progress.   
  
 _Helo._  
  
Gods, Helo. That knot reformed in her stomach, or maybe it had never gone away and now hardened. She was long past tears.  
  
Galen's hand on the back of her neck tipped her head up so he could look in her eyes.   
  
"Hey," he said. "You okay?"  
  
"No."  
  
He sighed out a breath. "I know."  
  
She just shook her head.  
  
He kissed her forehead, but when he pulled back, he wasn't looking her in the eyes. His voice, though, was firm and kind at once.   
  
"You can't eat yourself up worrying about him. You know better than anybody how he gets when he sets his mind to something. There's no fighting him. He's a stubborn frakker. Tough. He might be running all over that planet, keeping other people alive. You don't know."  
  
"That's kind of the point," she replied.   
  
But he was right: she did know him—better than Galen did., better than maybe anybody else, because for all Helo made friends with everybody he met, he could be frightfully hard to really get close to. But she had, through proximity and sheer stubbornness. She'd always thought she was more stubborn than he was, but she was apparently wrong. She might never forgive herself for that.   
  
"I mean, I'm not trying to tell you what to feel about it," he said. "I'm just…" He shook his head. "Frak if I know what I'm trying to say."  
  
"There's nothing to say," she replied, kissing him resolutely on the mouth.   
  
There's nothing to think. Sharon's gone around and around in circles with this, and all it does is distract her from herself and her mission. Boomer was never this self-analytical. Maybe that's why it feels so strange that she is. But she can't help but be. She is Boomer, Boomer aware of what it means to be Boomer.  
  
 _He pulled her back down to his chest and she just lay there, listening to him breathe._  
  
She listens to Helo breathing, but she doesn't touch him. She doesn't even look at him. For a while she projects herself somewhere else, but that's hard to do with her mind and especially her ears and eyes so intent on the present, this strange apartment. Nothing about this planet seems familiar anymore, to either of them.  
  
She wakes him when she's supposed to, and for a moment he draws her down into his arms, tucking her back against his chest. Half asleep, he nudges his nose into the hollow behind her ear.  
  
Then, eventually, he sighs and lets her go, forcing himself into a sitting position so that she can sleep, and she does.   
  
*  
  
 _With her ear against Galen's chest, she listens to the insistent beat of his heart, the way it quickens. It makes her a little anxious, so she clings tighter, focusing on the heat from his skin and the spicy, salt smell of his body and the way his hands make sure paths up and down her back. He's always been so grounding for her, she thinks. Steadying. But as she realizes it, she knows it's no longer entirely true._  
  
"Sharon?"  
  
She can hear something in his tone that makes her own heart start up, her pulse so heavy it hurts.   
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"When I thought…" He sighs, then he takes a deep breath and says, "I'm just gonna say it. I love you. You know that, don't you?"  
  
When she raises up to look him in the eyes, it happens fast. She can't look at him too long without feeling something inside her unwind, unravel, threaten to spin out of control. So she kisses him and hopes he knows what she means.   
  
He does, she thinks, and his hands know her, too; they seem to cradle her body everywhere at once. She shifts off of him and rolls him over on top of her until it's tanks pressing down into tanks and bare thighs grazing bare thighs. His fingers slip between her legs to find her still wet, and then he guides himself inside her until she's stretched full and aching with longing, to make him move. And he does.   
  
*  
  
She wakes with a throbbing between her legs. If Helo's conscious of how aroused she is, she can't tell. He goes to relieve himself and get them some fresh water for their canteens.  
  
She remembers what she dreamed, how it was just more of the same thing her brain can't turn loose of. A memory. Not hers? Hers? Such distinctions don't matter; it only matters that it was this short of terrifying.  
  
So this is what it means to be human, she thinks—these things and people and places that can take her away with pads of fingers against the back of her neck and warm breath against her jaw and arms circling her chest and holding her tight, down to this earth; this shocking and sickening vulnerability gnawing at her when he's out of her sight—not because she doesn't feel strong without him. She simply feels that she's stronger with him than she ever knew to be before.  
  
When Helo comes back, she's almost ready to claw her way out of her skin. She wants to open her legs to him and let him touch her, frak her, do whatever he wants. But he looks so exhausted, despite their sleeping, and she has to admit that this abandoned apartment, one of so many dozens, hundreds, millions, is nothing at all like an aphrodisiac. So she stands and throws her arms around him in a tight hug, playing Boomer or just genuinely holding on for herself, she doesn't know.   
  
With Boomer and Galen, the sex was always like it was the times they went stomping off into the storage room to tear each other's clothes off, even when they were in a bed somewhere. For a long time, Boomer had convinced herself it was just lust, and maybe it was, but somewhere along the line it converted to passion. This is how Sharon recognizes this thing she feels as her cheek rests against Helo's chest, hard and warm, and she wants to just crawl inside him to stay. She can't make herself stop wanting this much, but maybe if she's still and quiet, it won't overtake her.  
  
She thinks:  _Galen slips up inside her again and again, pressing deep, groaning because this time is even better than it was just a little while before. Like it's been days or weeks without this. Except it hasn't._  
  
But she's already telling herself the feeling can't last. Nothing lasts like this. Nothing anymore.  
  
"Hey," Helo says, pulling back to look her in the eyes.  
  
It takes longer than she'd like for her to snap back to reality. This sinking into memory, it's nothing like projection. "Yeah?"  
  
"You okay?"  
  
"Why wouldn't I be?"  
  
"I don't know. You've just been…quiet the last couple of days."  
  
"I don't know." She shrugs and lets him go and moves toward their things. She thinks better when she's not wrapped up in his arms. Clearer. Everything's clearer when she gets out of the gravitational pull of Helo's body, his eyes. "I guess I'm just worried about everybody on Galactica."  
  
"Tyrol?"  
  
"Yeah," she says, and for the first time she really means it. "Helo, I—"  
  
"It's okay, Sharon. I get it."   
  
 _He's trying, she thinks. He wants to understand. But he hasn't been there._  
  
A part of her has always dwelt on Boomer—wondering whether she was dead by now, how it happened—but it surprises her to realize she's concerned about how Tyrol's coping. That same memory is still trying to play itself out in her mind, and now, for once, it doesn't feel intrusive to see it through. Still reckless, though, but she can't help it now. She lets it form clear pictures and true sensations instead of the vague shapes of facts it always did before.   
  
 _Galen's already shuddering a little, his hips jerking instead of rocking smooth. She lets her body tense and squeeze around him. She won't come again, but feeling him sinking down over her, shaking and thrusting and groaning in her ear is good. So good. Arousal washes over her, easy and warm, and she raises her hips, coming up to meet his over and over. His hands at her neck hold her head still as he kisses her._    
  
For a while, at least, they have a temporary reprieve. Maybe that's why she can't stop remembering Boomer returning to Galactica and throwing her arms around Galen. It would be as easy for Sharon to curl up in his arms as Helo's. Easier, maybe. Helo was always something of an enigma to Boomer, and she realizes why when Helo—her Helo—comes and stands in front of her again, her face in his hands, his eyes searching intently.   
  
 _Galen's mouth on hers makes her close her eyes, but when she does, there's still a face there, one with green eyes instead of brown, that looks just as frakking pleading as Galen's does. She thinks about his lips. Yes, his, Helo's; hasn't she always thought about his lips, some part of him she might claim for herself? And then she's kissing his lips, not Galen's. Like she always wanted to._  
  
Wasn't it always? Surely it was always. Gods, frak.   
  
He made her nervous, Sharon thinks. God. Something along her spine trembles. Frak. Helo's hands on her jaw make some deep down part of her shake. She's always known about that flicker of lust—if it hadn't been there, probably this wouldn't work at all—but she didn't know what she saw was less a flash of light and more a shadow indicating something deeper, wider. Maybe not Helo, though. Something else.  
  
 _Galen's kissing her, but maybe it's really Helo kissing her goodbye, and it makes her feel so hollow inside she holds Galen tighter and tighter until he's driving deep into her, thinking it's what she wants. What she wants, though, is to have a different pair of arms around her altogether. She hates herself for feeling it, but a small flame of doubt flares up inside her, scorches across her heart as she wonders if maybe, just maybe, it's worse than she thought. Maybe it was always supposed to be him._    
  
"Sharon?" Helo says.  
  
"Sorry."  
  
He shakes his head like she doesn't need to apologize. "What's wrong?"  
  
She can't really put it to words, so she just pulls him back to where they'd been sleeping, thinking how she knows these hands—not because he ever laid them on Boomer but because Boomer wanted him to. When Helo's looking down at her, she begins to wonder if she actually knows what it feels like for him to make love to her. She's mortally afraid it's really been Tyrol all along. After all, he was the safer choice for Boomer—until he wasn't anymore. Then there was Helo, coming up between her emotions and the body on top of hers, his sincere words in her ear. Guilt was apparently easier for her, even the nagging guilt of that ghost of an attraction she felt, one she thought she felt even greater after he was—since he was?—gone.   
  
Sharon thinks of how Boomer's probably up there on that ship having nightmares of flying off from Caprica, not knowing Helo is maybe safer than she imagines, here under something like her own protection. Sharon wishes she could tell her to stop worrying. She'd also tell her to stop fighting Galen so hard, something she'd say even though she knows exactly what's coming for them. Actually, that's how she knows they deserve a few more moments of peace before the walls come down around them.  
  
With Helo settling himself on top of her, kissing her and letting his body melt into hers, she's startled but in the end not particularly surprised to find her mind lingering with Boomer and with Galen. He's untold FTL jumps away, and this-- this is too close. It's easy to be Boomer sometimes. It's so much simpler to let this warm body on top of hers be that ghost of lust in her mind than the very real person he is.  
  
She closes her eyes, but when Helo unzips her suit and peels it down her legs, unzips himself just enough so he can press his naked hips between hers, and thrusts inside her, it doesn't feel at all like frakking Galen when she went back to Galactica, except for that disorienting feeling of falling and falling and falling.


End file.
